(ANSA) - PALERMO, FEBRUARY 09 - During the guarantee interrogation, Alfonso Tumbarello, a doctor from Campobello di Mazara who was treating the boss Messina Denaro, and Andrea Bonafede, cousin and namesake of the surveyor who lent his identity to the godfather.
The two were arrested two days ago on charges, respectively, of external complicity in mafia association and forgery and aiding and abetting and procuring non-compliance with the sentence aggravated by having favored Cosanostra.
Tumbarello, who in two years followed the mafia boss in the path of treatment for the cancer he was suffering from, prescribing 137 recipes and analyzes registered to his client Andrea Bonafede, claimed that he never suspected that the real patient was another and that is Messina Denaro.
The doctor said he learned that Bonafede had been diagnosed with cancer and limited himself, without visiting him, to prescribing therapies and tests that he would then send him through his cousin.
He also stated that his client had expressed the wish that the disease would not be known, a circumstance which in his eyes explained certain behaviors of his, including the fact that he did not personally go to the studio.
However, Tumbarello admitted that he acted as an intermediary between the former mayor of Castelvetrano Vaccarino and Messina Denaro's brother, Salvatore.
Andrea Bonafede, on the other hand, claimed that he had only complied with the requests of his cousin who said he was seriously ill and that he went back and forth between him and the doctor to get and deliver the health documents necessary for treatment.
(HANDLE).
